PRESS CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY UNITED STATES ON INTERNATIONAL PRESS FREEDOM AWARDS
Press Briefing
PRESS CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY UNITED STATES ON INTERNATIONAL PRESS FREEDOM AWARDS
19961126
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
Three journalists, from India, Mexico and the Palestinian Authority, who had survived assassination attempts and challenged censorship, would be presented this evening with the Sixth Annual International Press Freedom Awards of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), correspondents were informed at a Headquarters press conference this morning, sponsored by the United States Mission. The event was held to present the recipients of the awards to correspondents.
In addition, the Executive Director of the CPJ, William A. Orme Jr., added that the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award would be handed to the publisher of The New York Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, in recognition of his decision 25 years ago to publish the Pentagon Papers. Mr. Orme described that decision as an action that strengthened press freedom in the United States and around the world.
A tribute would be paid, he said, to Veronica Guerin, the winner of a 1995 Press Freedom Award, who was assassinated in June for her reporting on drug trafficking in Ireland.
Similarly, he went on, a fourth award recipient, Ocak Isik Yurtcu, the imprisoned former Editor-in-Chief of Ozgur Gundem, a Turkish daily newspaper, before it was forced to close, would be honoured for his devotion to a balanced reporting of the Kurdish conflict. Mr. Yurtcu had already served two years of his 15-year prison sentence. Mr. Orme read out excerpts from a letter that Mr. Yurtcu had sent from Sakarya Prison in Turkey.
"The powers that be have increased their terrorizing pressure around the nation, especially in the region where the Kurdish people live, when journalists are killed, disappeared, put in prison, beaten up, when newspaper offices are burned and bombed, when publications with unorthodox views or news are censored and confiscated", Mr. Orme quoted the letter as stating. "As my colleagues struggle against this pressure, this award has special meaning because it shows that they are not alone, will not be alone as they strive to report the truth, that world support, in contrast to the lack of national support, is great and sincere."
The CPJ Executive Director then introduced the three award-winners who were present at the press conference. They were Yusuf Jameel, a reporter for Asian Age, a New Delhi-based daily, and former correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), who was being cited for his independent reporting of the civil war in Kashmir, India, despite attempts on his life.
The second was Daoud Kuttab, whom he described as the Project Director of Arabic Media Internet Network, who was being awarded for his perseverance in fostering an independent Arab press and his readiness to challenge the censorship practices of both the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority.
Mr. Orme then introduced Jesus Blancornelas as the Editor-in-Chief of Zeta, a weekly newspaper in Tijuana, Mexico, who was being recognized for his more than two decades of courageous reporting of official corruption and drug trafficking in the teeth of political pressure and violent reprisals, including the unsolved April 1988 murder of Zeta's co-founder, Hector Felix Miranda.
After being introduced, each of the three recipients gave a brief account of his life, work and struggles.
First was Mr. Jameel, the reporter for the Asian Age, who said that he had started reporting on Kashmir in 1978 without too many difficulties, until 1989-1990, when the militancy started in the province. The situation for journalism in Kashmir was further complicated by the fact that all parties to the conflict took strong exceptions to accurate reports that did not cast them in favourable light and regarded journalists as antagonists.
As a result, Mr. Jameel said, he had lost six colleagues to violent reprisals in the last six years. He himself had been attacked six times and had received a parcel bomb which went off, killing one of his colleagues and injuring others. He was wounded in the blast in Srinigar, the capital of Kashmir. After that incident, he went on, the BBC, for whom he also reported, flew him to London for treatment, only to renege later on a deal that would have kept him on the Corporation's payroll for a substantial length of time.
Commenting on the significance of receiving the ICJ award, he said that it would show that Srinigar-based journalists were not alone in their fight for press freedom.
When Daoud Kuttab, the Palestinian journalist, began telling the story of his life, he said that the media in the Palestinian Authority was changing from political organ of the Palestinian national movement into an authentic and professional entity. One newspaper had been closed shortly after the arrival of the Palestinian leadership in the Gaza Strip. Media practitioners had then asked the Palestinian leadership to release the journalists it had detained. Generally speaking, he added, the situation had improved, compared with the circumstances under Israeli occupation. Over the last year, three newspapers and 38 local radio and television stations had emerged in the West Bank. Such a development had allowed many people to create various news channels without censorship.
The Palestinian Authority had become more relaxed for a number of reasons, he said. The reasons could include the fact that the media
Press Awards Press Conference - 3 - 26 November 1996
representatives had protested attacks on journalists and that the new technologies for disseminating information were much more difficult to control. The territories were witnessing a proliferation of technologies such as satellites for communication and the Internet. By and large, things had improved over the days of Israeli occupation.
Speaking in Spanish through interpretation, Jesus Blancornelas, said that he had come from a Mexican state in which the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had been defeated in local elections. However, the local state governments, be they of the PRI or the National Action Party (PAN), were treated in the press in the same way. Mr. Blancornelas said that the PRI state government had forced him to flee from his country to live in the United States. The state authorities under the PAN, on the other hand, had not pursued the murderers of Zeta's co-founder.
Recalling the March 1994 assassination of the PRI presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, in Tijuana, Mr. Blancornelas said that his investigations into the murder had confirmed that the candidate had been killed by a lone gunman. Despite that, the former President of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, had tried to exploit the event, claiming that Mr. Colosio had been killed as a result of a conspiracy. That had created problems for the publication at a time of continuous drug trafficking. The problem of drug trafficking had persisted to such an extent that "when we speak with the police, we don't know whether we are also speaking to drug traffickers". That made things very difficult for the practice of journalism. In addition, the corruption of too many journalists allowed them to be used by governments which also used the courts to launch charges against independent journalists, accusing them of fraud, tax evasion and business problems. The charges were made in order to silence those reporters.
As to the situation nowadays, he said that the current President of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, had so far refrained from trying to control the press in his country.
In a question-and-answer session that followed, Mr. Blancornelas was asked to explain why the press in Mexico was corrupt. He said that Mexico had a 60-year tradition of what fit Mario Vargas Llosa's description of the country as having "the perfect dictatorship". Even though Mexico had almost 400 daily newspapers, only about 10 were truly independent. However, the real reasons for the corruption of journalists were more political than journalistic.
In response to a question as to whether censorship persisted under the Palestinian Authority, Mr. Kuttab, of the Arabic Media Internet Network, said it had. However, the problems mostly took the form of self-censorship, with publishers being less critical out of a feeling that the Authority was going through a transitional phase. Israeli censorship, too, continued, he said. For example, Israeli authorities had censored a cartoon on Jewish settlements from the Internet.
Press Awards Press Conference - 4 - 26 November 1996
Asked to explain what former President Salinas would have gained by insisting that the murder of Mr. Colosio was the work of some plotters, Mr. Blancornelas said that the former President had found the conspiracy thesis convenient to promote the view that outsiders were engaged in some plot against the country, considering the rise of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas and the continuing economic problems. The new President, on the other hand, was making an earnest effort to find out the facts of the Colosio assassination, calling for testimony from journalists and others with information on the murder.
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